Hmmm .... strange how much less time you have to write up extensive and pointlessly detailed blog entries when you actually have a proper job to do! It is now Sunday 7th December so I will try and rewrite my scattered notes into some sort of coherent form - it has been quite a week!!
SUNDAY
My knee seems to have largely recovered from the insect bite - the Fucibet has had an immediate effect, thank God! Wandered around the house for a few hours and then packed up some stuff and headed into Butare in the afternoon. Only problem was when I went to Ephraim's my laundry still wasn't back!! Ah well, figured I could call back tomorrow.
Headed into the village and - no motos! Sunday is a pretty quiet day in Gisagara so I was wondering if I was going to make it to the match (Andy did offer to come out on his bike and pick me up but I said that 13.5 stone of me plus my backpack might be a bit much!). Anyway, met Enoch and Kenneth and was chatting to them when, lo and behold, a moto (albeit with passenger on board)! So I signalled to the driver that I would be waiting here for him when he was ready and he reappeared a few minutes later. Turns out he lives in Gisagara, quite near my house, knows the district really well and would be happy to bring me on school inspections and his name is Deo, short for Deo Gratias. In a country with many wonderful and evocative names, this is probably the best one so far!
Checked into the Procur guesthouse (nice room, much more spacious and quieter than the Ineza and a working bathroom with hot water and a shower). Then I went to meet up with Amy, Andy and Tiga to watch the Manchester derby followed by Chelsea-Arsenal. Shock horror - the Faucon were charging RWF1500 a head in to watch! No way José - we headed off to another cute little bar ('cute' isn't the right word but I'll come back and change it later if I can think of anything better) called Sombrero which we thought might have football but no luck, so we just had a drink (Alfred: Idiot! Did he really think the Faucon would get away with charging RWF1500 if anyone else in town was showing the match?!!). We had a long chat about the ongoing fallout from the motorbike training (more about that sometime later - will wait until the dust has settled somewhat, but suffice to say that VSO Program Office and us volunteers have somewhat different interpretations of both the day itself and the general organisation of the training!!).
Andy and Tiga headed off and Amy and I swallowed hard and paid RWF 1000 to see Chelsea Arsenal (Arsenal won 2-1 - ah well!). To be fair to the Faucon, virtually no-one watching the match was buying anything to drink so they had to cover their costs somehow! Then we went to a new restaurant for food (can't remember its name, upstairs near Matar) - nice omelette, nice place. Jane joined us later as well. Then it was off home to bed and get ready for a good day's work tomorrow!!!
Got up bright and early, showered (oh! the luxury of hot water streaming down vertically on your body!!) put on my suit, packed up my laptop and cables and headed in to work. I was really looking forward to this. As I arrived in around 0730 (classes start at 0800) I saw the students milling around and chatting and the teachers gatehred in the staffroom. I chatted away and met one or two I hadn't seen the previous day. Then as the time dragged on towards 0800, instead of beginning to move towards their classrooms, the students began to form one large group under the trees adjoining the classrooms. I knew there had been quite a lot of complaints from the students the previous week - now it looked like they had had enough!
Sure enough, Anthony - the most senior of the teachers - came over to me and said that they were (in the words of the film Network) 'mad as hell and not going to take it any more'! So my first official job was to stand on a step and talk to the 200 or so students and try and find some way to defuse this! (When I say students, by the way, these 200 are all teachers, Principals, school secretaries, bursars, IT specialists and whatever, here for intensive English training)
Anyway, I heard some of their complaints and suggested they appoint a representative from each class to meet with me, outline their comlaints and see what could be done about it. The awkward thing is that the course is jointly run by MINEDUC and the British Council. The BC is responsible for the course, textbooks, teaching and so on, all of which has been running very smoothly. MINEDUC is responsible for the payment of allowances, food, accommodation and all other practical aspects of the course, none of which has gone properly!! As such, it was quite important that I not accept responsibility on behalf of the British Council for things that were the responsibility of MINEDUC!
Anyway, eventually they elected their representatives and I had a quick sitdown with them, having heard in the meantime that Diane from MINEDUC was on her way from Kigali. Basically they just wanted a chance to outline their grievances, the main ones of which were as follows:
- they had not yet been paid their daily allowances which meant they had no spending money (the teachers come from all over Rwanda) (Alfred: should also be pointed out that the allowance is a princely RWF1000 a day, or €1.30)
- because the school had not been given any money by MINEDUC, they had not been able to buy food; their last breakfast consisted of sorghum porridge which had a lot of sand in it
- there were no mosquito nets on the dormitory beds and they were infested with mosquitos
- there was a very limited supply of drinking water; there had been no water at all all day Sunday
- some of the teachers have small children with them but no arrangements have been made for their food etc
- no social facilities have been made available even though they are living onsite here 24-hours a day - no TV, no basketballs or volleyballs etc
These were the high points, there were other minor things as well. Suffice to say, I could see their point. I thanked them and said I would ask the MINEDUC representative to meet them when she arrived. They also agreed, at my suggestion, to go back to class until such time as she arrived and they had some idea of what was going on.
When Diane arrived, she was a little apprehensive but quite ready to meet with the representatives. We were also joined by the school bursar and intendant, who had been getting a lot of stick from the trainees (better word) - rather unfairly as they had been given no funds and schools here would not have any funds on hand to use (or any guarantee that they would be refunded by MINEDUC for any spending made without authorisation). I sat in on the meeting but suggested it be held in Kinyarwandan to make sure everyone was clear about what was happening (and also to make the point that I was not directly involved in this discussion!).
Anyway, a long meeting but pretty much everything got sorted - mosquito nets to be provided, additional dormitories to be opened so everyone has a bottom bunk (can't have a net if you are on a top bunk, not enough clearance), TV and sports facilities, allowances to be paid ASAP (turned out to be that evening, luckily), funds immediately to the school to provide proper food etc and so on. Diane was very cool, very composed and the whole meeting went well. The reps went back to class and told everyone what was happening and it now looked that everything was back to normal!
Once school finished, I decided to hop on a moto and go home for some clothes: I agreed RWF4000 for there and back plus RWF500 for waiting time, as we had to go to collect the laundry and then go to my house and sort out laundry etc. Did all that but when I came out of my house, the moto driver said there was a problem. A passing local said that, since we had come through the village, the traffic police had set up a checkpoint and he didn't have a document that he was supposed to carry. He asked if it was OK to take a shortcut via a back road to avoid the police. I said fine (remember, there wasn't exactly a surfeit of moto-drivers that day!) and so we headed east.
Now when he said a shortcut to avoid the police, I figured this was going to be a quick zip along a back road and then we would rejoin the main Gisagara-Butare road. No. Quite the opposite in fact. We headed deeper and deeper into the countryside and on roads that were definitely the worst I had seen so far in Rwanda (Alfred: but these are not the worst roads in Rwanda - in fact there are no worst roads in Rwanda. There is no road anywhere in Rwanda so bad that there isn't a worse one somewhere else. Logically impossible, but true!). At first it was fine - the driver spoke really good French and clearly enough that I could hear and understand him through his visor and my helmet. I was asking him about buying motorbikes, insurance, tax, police requirements and so on - all quite interesting and useful from my point of view. He was also interested in what I was doing here in Rwanda so it was all quite OK, for the first half hour or so. However we were still heading east, towards Burundi. Given that Gisagara is half-way between Butare and the Burundi border, and it takes 15 minutes to travel that far (albeit a lot faster than we were able to go) I was beginning to wonder where we would end up!
Finally we turned north (we needed to be going west but north was better than east!) but by now it was dusk and a long long way from home! Then, going up a hill quite slowly, we hit a patch of sand on the road. The driver managed to right the bike the first time but when we hit a second patch, the bike, and both of us, went flying! Interesting fact: bikes seem like heavy enough things but if they topple over on you slowly enough, they aren't really so bad! Anyway, we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves down and then the diver tried to restart the bike. I was a bit bruised and battered (right elbow, hip and knee) but the only thing I was worried about was the bike not restarting!! We were not in the middle of nowhere - we were a LONG way from the middle of nowhere, somewhere on the outer unexplored periphery of nowhere. We hadn't even seen any people for a while which is really amazing.
Bike restarted and off we went again, but the driver was going even more slowly now because
a) he was nervous about dumping me on the ground again
b) it was now pitch black
c) the road was REALLY bad
d) there were people walking on the roads and they stuck to the middle so they didn't fall into the ditch in the dark.
Meanwhile, I could feel the interesting sensation of my jeans and shirt snugly attaching themselves to the blood on my knee and elbow, only to be dragged free again and again as we hit yet another pothole.
Anyway, it took about 95 minutes to get back to Butare, by which stage I was cold, sore, and my left hip felt it was going to explode with discomfort from sitting so rigidly and stiffly for so long (Alfred: a bit of perspective here - Bruce and Soraya had an eight-hour moto ride as passengers recently; 90 minutes is chickenfeed, though falling off does add an additional wrinkle). I told him to drop me at the Matar supermarket so I could get some disinfectant and plasters! He was distinctly nervous as I got off the bike and handed him back his helmet but, hey, what was I going to say! I just paid him, at which point he said something about my being very patient! I replied 'C'était un voyage tres intéressant mais pas un voyage que je veux faire un deuxieme fois!'. (Alfred: can't do those backward accent thingies in this blog - sorry!).
So what is the single most important thing you do after having had an accident in Africa which involves the skin being broken and possibly contaminated? Yes, you get beer. Found some disinfectant soap in Matar and then headed straight to the Faucon for beer. Nice cold beer always makes the world feel like a better place. I had also grabbed some vegetarian pizzas in Matar so I figured I could give dinner a miss at the school.
Then I was joined by two students from the course who were having a drink there - they said they wanted to buy me something as a thank you for everything that had happened that morning! So nice, though I did explain that all I had done was listen to them - it was the MINEDUC rep who had actually solved the problem. They bought me a beer and a plate of chips (very welcome) and we had a long chat about Rwanda, education, comparisons with Ireland (they are always interested to hear how we solved or addressed our various problems and what if any lessons Rwanda can learn from that). One topic was particularly interesting - how social conditions in a country are usually slow to change but can change really quickly after a traumatic event (genocide for Rwanda, famine for Ireland). Patrick and Gerald - nice guys!
We walked back home together and I headed for my room to check the damage. Nothing too serious to be honest but my nice new fawn shirt now has a big hole in the elbow. I cleaned myself up and went to bed. Sleep - not a hope. I had so much adrenalin coursing through my system it was 1230 before I got to sleep!!!
TUESDAY
You'll be glad to hear that Tuesday was pretty uneventful!! Breakfast was a vast improvement on the previous day, now that the school had actually been given some money to buy stuff with!Shamira (who teaches the beginners' class) told me she had to go to Kigali the following day for a meeting as she has just been promoted. When I asked her about it, it turned out she has been made Deputy-Principal of Greenhills primary school in Kigali, THE most prestigious school in Rwanda - it's where President Kagame (among others) sends his kids! Good for Shamira! This meant I would be taking her Beginners' class all day tomorrow.
So I did a bit of work to prepare for that (thank God Amy was there to help and advise - this is NOT my area of greatest expertise). I also got to know Diane from MINEDUC a bit better: her department has only five people in it and is responsible for organising all teacher training, which is bad enough at the best of times. At the moment, with every teacher in the country supposed to be getting English language training now or in the near future, it is a bloody nightmare!!
Later Amy and I decided to go for food - we couldn't face another mélange (it's always the same for lunch and dinner, every day, so it can get just a LITTLE bit heavy going, even if it is very good quality mélange by Rwandan standards). Everywhere we went said they weren't doing food! Is there something about Tuesdays? Eventually we ended up back in the same restaurant as the previous night - I didn't eat because I had just had the last Matar pizza left over from the previous night (hate wasting food) so I watched Amy having an omelette speciale. Then back home to do some preparation of classes for tomorrow.
Now this was a MUCH more interesting day. I got up REALLY early, adrenalin coursing through my veins. I have never actually taught English in my life (one of the few subjects that fall into that category) and certainly not English as a Second Language. However, we have a textbook and I had songs, puzzles and games prepared plus a secret weapon! Classes are 0800-1000, 1030-1200 and 1330-1600 (that's a long afternoon stretch!). All the things Amy had suggested to me worked a treat - I really enjoyed it but boy! is it different when you have the same group for the whole day as opposed to changing over every 40 or 80 minutes!!
We did songs ('I hear thunder, I hear thunder' which they managed to do in a four-part round), played 'buzz' (thanks again to Sukey Chesterton) and, in the afternoon, to break up the long session, I decided to teach them céilí dancing. I can't remember who it was who said to me that they expected me at some stage to teach Rwandese to do this but it had been at the back of my mind ever since! Some of them were intrigued and got the idea of having steps and such a regular beat - others were completely bewildered!! I didn't manage to get beyond teaching the actual 1-2-3 but it's a start!!
I was completely shattered by 1600 - but really enjoyed it at the same time!! I went back, showered and then met everyone for dinner at 1930. It was a really nice evening. The other teachers are Amy and Soraya from VSO (whom you know already - pictures on my website if you have forgotten), Shamira, Beatrice, Emmanuel, Anthony and Dickens. They are all really nice people but Emmanuel is one of the most amazing characters I have ever come across
in my life - one of these live-wires who just illuminates any gathering with his jokes, dramatic gestures, anecdotes and whatever. I wish everyone I know could meet him. He was telling us about this man in Kigali who claimed to have had a personal revelation from God that all sinners in Rwanda would die at 1100 on the morning of Saturday December 20th - sinners include women who wear trousers, anyone who wears earrings and unspecified others! Anyway, the government had locked him up in prison in Kigali for causing panic, a move which probably only served to increase the attention he was getting.
Emmanuel was coming up with plans for us all to evade this disaster: one idea was to fill the earlobes of those who wear earrings with chewed chewing gum. Apply a match and the gum and skin melt together to form a filling that no angel would be able to notice! Another is for us all to go to Uganda for the day and stand over the border with binoculars to see if people start falling down at 1100. He also wanted us all to start confessing our sins publicly as a) that would free our souls from sin b) it would take us from now to the 20th to actually recite the litany of sins we had committed!
It was a great evening, rounded off rather spectacularly when Diane from MINEDUC casually dropped into the conversation that the other MINEDUC representative who was arriving tomorrow, Emma, would not after all be bringing the teachers their salary as promised, but instead contracts that would have to be signed and then taken back to Kigali for processing before any money would be forthcoming! Given that Emmanuel and Dickens were finishing on Friday, their chnaces of getting paid by then were pretty nonexistent!
Well, well, well - the s**t really hit the fan. The teachers were supposed to be paid at the end of each week but last week there had been no money. One trainer - Joshua - had actually done only the first week and had left with nothing. Now it looked like the same was going to happen with Emmanuel and Dickens, while Shamira and Beatrice and Anthony (plus Soraya and Amy and me) would have to wait until the end of the course - if even then!
It got pretty hot and heavy between Diane and the others (to be honest, Amy, Soraya and I stayed pretty much out of it) and we left dinner with a lot of very angry people walking off into the dark. I went back to my room to prepare lists for the next day and at 2200 there was a knock on my door. It was Emmanuel who had just been talking to the other teachers and they had decided that they were not going to teach until such time as they had been paid the money they were owed, either by MINEDUC or the British Council. I said I would pass this on to the BC and asked that at least everyone come over to breakfast the next morning in case there had been any developments and classes could go ahead. No problem said Emmanuel and that was that. I texted John Simpson from the British Council and he rang me back, so I filled him in on the situation. He was coming down the next morning with the MINEDUC representative so he said he would keep me apprised of developments!!!
THURSDAY
Another exciting day!!! Arrived for breakfast at 0720, everyone was sitting there more or less in complete silence. I wanted to talk to the teachers about how they were feeling but, with Diane there, I wasn't sure whether or not a) they had told her what they were doing and b) whether they wanted to talk about the situation in front of her. Anyway, eventually Emmanuel announced - around 0750 - that they would not be teaching that morning and Diane needed to tell Emma - if she had not already done so - that she needed to come down with money - not contracts or promises. He also said the teachers would go to their classes at 0800 and set them work and then say that they had a meeting they had to go to. I had thought of telling the students (after all, they are teachers like us) what was going on - given Monday's events, they were hardly going to be unsympathetic - but the trainers were NOT keen - possibly because they had made one or two caustic comments on Monday when the students had gone on strike!!!
Anyway, Emma went straight to MINEDUC in Kigali and managed to get money released and cheques filled out on the spot to bring down to Butare - I cannot tell you what an achievement this must have been or how difficult a hurdle this represents here! Anyway, we were told this and I suggested that there was no further purpose to be served in staying out of class as everything that could be done was being done. Can't say all the trainers were mad keen on the idea but come 1030 everyone was back in class (how much actual teaching some of them were doing I felt it better not to check!).
John and Emma arrived down at 1400 and pretty much everything got sorted out. To put it in perspective a little, the trainers - having signed up for 26 days of work at a certain rate, had already - even before the course began - had the number of days and the daily rate promised reduced, so having given up their holidays to do some extra work then found themselves offered less of it and at a lower rate than originally promised. To then not get paid at all was really adding insult to injury. It was funny, at the same time, watching them not wanting the students to know they were doing exactly the same thing the students had done Monday and that they as trainers had been so critical of!!
I had the 1330-1600 class again today, not the beginners', unfortunately, but a motley crew with the title Admin/ICT. The trainees are now gearing up for preparing and delivering subject lessons in English (groups are Maths, Sciences, Psychology, Languages, Methodology and Humanities). But about 40 of them are secretaries, librarians, boarding matrons, principals, IT technicians and whatever, people who don't actually teach at all, so my job is to continue teaching them while the rest prepare lessons. Luckily Amy had again come to my rescue with lots of advice but it was tough going (Alfred: 'shambles' was the exact word going through his mind - possibly rather harshly - as the class progressed: mind you, 'progressed' is altogether too organised and deliberate a verb for this class - 'lurched', 'stumbled', 'meandered' - insert verb of your choice relating to aimless wandering).
For the last 40 minutes we went to the computer room where we will be spending tomorrow's class. Rather predictibly, the computers that had been working fine all week promptly refused to co-operate so we spent 40 minutes in a manner all too many of my colleagues are familiar with - all the students sittng blankly in front of the machines while we tried to diagnose the problem (turned out to be external - the service provider's signal was down). I was pretty glad when 1600 turned up!!
Emmanuel and Dickens were to finish the next day so everyone turned up for dinner that night: more fireworks and hilarity from Emmanuel - we are going to miss him when he leaves. Dickens too - he may be a lot quieter but he is a really warm and intelligent guy, hope to run into him again sometime.
FRIDAY
Because of the 'meeting' yesterday we are behind schedule, so the specialist groups got an extra class today which meant I had to take my Admin/ICT group again. This time I was a lot better prepared: flash cards, bingo sheets, word squares, everything went really well and they really enjoyed the class. It is still funny to realise that most of them have never seen a word seach or know what bingo is - you take all these things so much for granted in our system.
Then off to the computer lab for the afternoon - more frustration and annoyance. We did eventually get most of them on the Internet but George (Mr. I.T. in the school) had to manually configure each machine and put in an IP address (Alfred: Wow - doesn't he really sound like he knows what he is talking about here!!! hah!) - anyway it took ages and all they wanted to do was check their email instead of exploring the English language websites the British Council had given them a list of. I did manage to get all of them to spend at least some of their time doing this.
However, one trend became immediately apparent as the afternoon went on. I was able to leave my group in the lab and check around the other classes and it quickly becamse clear they were not happy. First Soraya's Humanities group, then Anthony's Sciences and eventually most of the others made it clear that they felt they had nothing like enough specialised vocabulary to be able to deliver an entire 40-minute class in English. One Science teacher is in the Elementary English class but is supposed to deliver a class on photosynthesis - he can barely string a conversational sentence together! All of them said what they needed was not just more time to prepare but they needed to be given the specialist vocabulary essential to each subject to be able to do something like this. To buy some time I said we would convert tomorrow morning's study session into further preparation time and I would make myself available to work with any group that needed help (which turned out to be History, Geography, Political Education, Physics, Chemistry and Biology!!).
Amy, Soraya and I met Jane for a drink and then she came back for dinner with us to the school. Dickens was actually still there as he had decided to teach Saturday morning (relief for me as Emmanuel was gone and Anthony had also decided to head off, so I was two short already). Afterwards we went for a drink with Shamira and Dickens - nice evening even if the pub was rather wierd!!
SATURDAY
Not an easy day. The students are getting quite upset at this stage (well, some of them at least) as they feel they are being asked to do something that is totally beyond their capabilities (which about describes the whole endeavour to be honest). Their main concern however, being realistic and logical beings, is not so much the next week here but what is going to happen in January when they return to their teacher training colleges and are expected to teach every single class solely through English.
Anyway, I wandered around and spoke to as many of them as I could and asked them for realistic and attainable suggestions. What emerged was a real need for even a basic lexicon/dictionary/vocab list for each subject giving the technical vocabulary needed. After that dictionaries for each training college and possibly a set of A-level textbooks covering the subjects so they could see how to phrase and describe stuff to their classes. So I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon researching on the Internet and trying to find any stuff that would be useful to them. Maths and Sciences aren't too bad but for history, geography, politics and so on, the vocabulary is too commonplace. However, by the end of the day I had gathered together enough for basic Mathematics and ICT dictionaries - the idea is to have some stuff gathered by the end of the course that they can take away with them, at least for the sciences, Maths and ICT. I also think the idea of a set of dictionaries and textbooks for each teacher training college should be costed - there are only 11 colleges after all. Providing the GORSEAU science dictionary for each of them (that's the best one there is) would be about €1,000 - a lot less than trying to gather all the science teachers together and cram English into their heads.Similarly there are French-English dictionaries available for many other subjects and at relatively little cost. Something to be explored for the future.
Once I escaped from school I went to meet Andy to watch football (luckily my laundry had turned up so I was finally able to get out of my suit at long last!). No Man City Fulham, in fact no Arsenal Wigan or Chelsea Whatever (?Bolton) at first but we just had beer and chatted and then Amy and Jane turned up. They had been in the market, Amy to buy fabric and Jane to look for some black market petrol. Well, that's putting it a bit strongly but there is a temporary petrol shortage at the moment so you can only buy it privately at a premium price (RWF1500 a litre instead of RWF768). Anyway Jane had got her hands on some but it had leaked a bit so there was a terrible reek of petrol and, given the prevailing circumstance, a lot of people sniffing and wondering where the petrol was!! We did get to see the second half of Arsenal Wigan which was OK - though Arsene Wenger doesn't look any more cheerful despite winning two games on the trot.
Anyway, nice evening, went to a different Chinese restaurant to the other one (they spell their name 'The Chineese Restaurant' possibly - as Andy said - to avoid being sued by the 'Chinese Restaurant' for copyright violation!). Food was fine but remarkably similar in taste and price to the other Chinese restaurant. Then Amy and I walked home - it was a nice walk, the entire length of the northern end of Butare, half ten on a Saturday night and hardly a soul to be seen or a sound to be heard.
UPDATE: TINA HEWING
Good news this week from London - Tina has got the 'all clear' from the Central Hospital for Wierd Tropical Diseases or whatever it is called and hopes to be coming back to Rwanda in a few weeks' time. Meanwhile, two friends of hers are arriving next week on holiday, having booked to come a long time ago with the view of seeing her!!! Anyway, they should be in Butare next week so that's good, I'll still be here and free in the evenings to see them. Pity Tina won't be here but it is good to hear she will be back soon.
OBSERVATION: RWANDANESE AND AUTHORITY
I'm still getting my head around this. As someone I was talking to recently (a Ugandan, not a Rwandese) said, Rwandanese have an amazing ability to do exactly what they are told to do: this is simultaneously their greatest asset and their greatest weakness, depending on what they are being told to do and who is telling them. This whole learning English and becoming Anglophone overnight thing - I'm trying to think if there is another country in the world where people would have accepted such a major change so willingly. They are genuinely willing, there is no doubt about that, keen and enthusiastic to learn English but there is still this element that, because they have been told to do it, they are unquestioningly doing it (Alfred: that is not very coherently expressed but the poor bugger has been typing this blog for three hours straight now so cut him a little slack). In a way, it makes what happened this week all the more remarkable - the students on Monday and the teachers on Thursday downing tools and refusing to work is just not very common here: on the whole, I think it's good - people should stand up for themselves when they are being unfairly treated - it's just not the way things usually happen here (the exception that proves the rule, to use an-often misunderstood saying).
Another example: because I was helping the specialist groups Saturday morning, my group got more or less abandoned again. I went into the room at 0800, handed them all reams of work to do (textbooks and photocopies) and told them to get on with it. When I checked back at 1000 every single one of them was still there, beavering away. I told them they could go from 1030 onwards when they had had enough. At 1100 most had gone, some were still there and there was a neat pile of completed exercises for me on the desk.
Another example: one of the groups was complaining to one of the trainers that they just were finding the lesson preparation impossible. She said she understood their concerns but they were just going to have to make the best of it and that was that. Everyone promptly sat down and just got back to work!!
Anyone familiar with Rwandan history over the last 80-100 years will recognise that this has always been a very strong trait in Rwandese - a very authoritarian society with strict stratification of power and a hierarchical system where everyone knows (or at least used to know) who was superior to whom. It comes out very strongly when you ask people to make up their own minds about things rather than being told, when you try and convince them that not all things are black or white but that things can be grey or in more than one category at a time (they HATE that), and above all if you ask them to be critical about things or say what is wrong. A colleague of mine told me of a meeting she was at where she had exhorted the director or whatever he was to tell the staff that they desperately needed to hear their suggestions, especially in relation to anything they felt wasn't going well. He said this at the meeting and there was a long silence. Finally, one member of staff plucked up the courage to venture one or two 'constructive criticisms'. There was a silence, then the director announced the meeting was over, went back to his office with the VSO person and promptly burst into tears!!! Oh dear - still got a long way to go!!
1 comment:
Well when things happen over there they really do happen ....very different to the kind of things happening here!! Would NOT fancing motorbiking in the middle of nowhere in the dark!! Well done!!!
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